Bush 43 talks to deity -- deity responds ...

Obviously, all the right-wing religious focus has placed the Bible “under the curve” – a predictable reality. Here is a premise – Regardless of whether it is in the physical or philosophical realm: Truth is Truth and a Supreme Truth spans both realms with equal validity.

In that context, promotion of a controversy over creationism and Intelligent Design (ID) now takes on a new direction – scientists reconstituted the 1918 influenza DNA and found it to be a bird-flu.

The current avian influenza has had limited human infection – though among those infected, there is a 60 percent fatality rate. For now this latest pandemic is confined to Asia; but it’s a small world.

The link between the 1918 pandemic and the current outbreak of avian flu brings to light the reality of the debate promoted by ID proponents – a doctrine dictating that any sudden complex biological shift mandates the intervention of an intelligent agent, or designer.

In 1918, an avian virus became a human one, and it seems to be repeating. In accordance with the basic ID premise, the flu must be the product of an intelligent agent; moreover, it must specifically be targeting a violent people for wholesale extermination – that’s born again fundamentalist faith.

Evolution would view the viral transition from bird to human as a normal, recurring, and random modification within the viral genome – one consistent with punctuated equilibrium, wherein a small portion of a species (or virus) forms a branch suitable for survival in a new environment.

Evolution is self-evident in all aspects of life. Only the origin of the first burst of energy requires, and factually mandates the definition of a deity. After the “Big-Bang”, all else flows naturally.

ID proponents fudge interlocking mutual verification found in geology, radio-carbon dating, DNA mutation, and the archaeological record. ID insists on an incompetent interventionist “designer”.

In the fantasy world of Intelligent Design, a world populated with Bush conservatives, no objective, affirmable, fact has relevance– and there is no human cause-and-effect responsibility, and reality is viewed as a lie. It is a world devoid of ethics and morality – the constructs of a deceitful designer.

In the world of ID, a world without evolutionary stages in which the physical, intellectual and moral nature of life improves toward perfection, all acts of nature become retribution, or corrections, in the design specifications – hence avian flu, SARS, HIV/AIDS or a rash of plagues to destroy us.

A BBC production – to be aired on the 10th, 17th, and 24th – quotes Bush as saying, “I'm driven with a mission from God. ... God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan'. ...And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq...' And I did.”

This raises a question – one consistent with the approaching Passover season – Does our president, like Moses, talk directly to the “Designer”? Or does the voice come to him, as it did to Pharaoh?

And if the latter, is America the pharaoh’s army – which was destined to be killed when the waters crashed in upon them? Bush promotes the teaching of ID; he has run up deficits which threaten the economic security of this nation, and the industrialized world; and he has embarked on a Crusade.

We are in the Season of Faith, our president – who controls the most destructive nuclear arsenal on earth – views himself as the active agent of a designer who advocates war; are we subject to whims and caprices of ID’s born again fundamentalist designer? Is it a time to Pray?
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